Bounds of Inheritance

Bounds of Inheritance depicts a search for truth and wholeness by giving voice to what was hidden and lost within my own family lineage. I centered this work on my aunt’s story in relationship to her father, my grandfather. In 2004 she revealed to me that he had sexually abused her as a young teenager, a dark secret she held for most of her life. The truth was traumatic and difficult to digest. He had been a beloved grandfather to me and my siblings, and this was a side of him that our family never knew. He presented as a man of dignity and integrity, even in the way he dressed, always walking proudly, and wearing a distinctive fedora hat. As his posthumous shadow emerged, we grappled with this paradox, and themes of duality, contradiction, and illusion. I discovered other “shadow” stories within my family involving similar themes of abuse and broken trust, within four overlapping generations. As a pattern emerged, it reinforced for me that family legacies are not by accident; they are intergenerational, and therefore passed on and repeated. Bounds of Inheritance is in part a healing journey in the understanding that–– confronting the dark is a catalyst for growth and transformation, and that by seeking and knowing the truth, we dismantle the invisible inheritances that keep us bound in darkness.